Pornhub.com has nothing to do with Jesus.com
So Social is the domain, and Mastodon/Piefed are the instances in my example?
If that’s the case, why not make everything (instance).com?
why not make everything (instance).com?
The cost of a (word).com domain can be tens of thousands of dollars if nobody owns it to millions of dollars if someone does. The cost of a (word).social domain is like $10.
Yup, this is why most Fediverse platforms are hosted on domains with TLDs that seem unusual (.social, .io, .ml, .xyz, .land, etc). Since most of these projects are funded by donations (if funded, at all), the domain is an excellent place to cut costs on a project like this.
The cost of a .com Domain can be under $10/year
I just bought bitwaba.com for like 8.49 a couple months ago.
Mastodon.social is the address to that specific Mastodon instance. Take a look at this site for more info.
why not make everything (instance).com?
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that? Are you suggesting everyone to use a ().com? If so, because they are rarely available and if they are, quite expensive.
.com, .net, .org, and .social are called Top Level Domains
You can register a second level domain (e.g. “google”, "lemmy”, “cnn”) with a specific TLD, resulting in a domain name (e.g. “google.com”, “lemmy.social”, “cnn.com”)
We have our instance on .ca for example, since we’re a Canadian instance. Other instances might use .eu being in the EU, or .fr for France
Some instances pick the TLD (.com, .ca, .org, etc.) to have a fun name. For example, https://sh.itjust.works
We need some Lemmy gold, because tht comment desserve it
@aihorde@lemmy.dbzer0.com draw for me A small statue of Lemming made in gold, inspired by award given at ceremonies
No. .social is a Top Level Domain(TLD) just like .com, .org, or .net
They’re no more connected than Facebook.com and Apple.com are.
Now, they could be run by the same folks; I have no idea on that front, but you can’t tell simply by the TLD
If I have a house in Orange County, California, and another house in Orange County, Florida, do I technically only have one house since they’re both in Orange County?
I think in your analogy, the county should be variable instead of the state.
I’m sorry about your confusion. Please start another thread, though, so people can focus on answering OP.
Surely you could see that my response was a rhetorical question in an answer to reflect upon the absurdity of the OPs question.
No. I see you making fun of someone for asking a question. They are trying to apply some of their knowledge to something new. What they have learned from some other good answers is useful going forward.
Sadly, it seems you need to learn more to be able to understand where this person is coming from.
Those two domains are as close to each other as google.com and facebook.com or thepiratebay.org and wikipedia.org or mit.edu and stanford.edu
To make the point more explicit: sharing a TLD doesn’t mean shit.
to a layman it’s probably best to just… not really think too deeply about this, there is layer upon layer of possible nuance and yet at the same time 99% of the time it’s as simple as “if the ‘thing.otherthing’ isn’t identical then they have absolutely nothing to do with each other”.
To really understand what’s going on you’ll need to dive into how computer networking functions and a bunch of other things, which i do highly encourage since it’s good to know, but the important thing here is that you’re talking about domain names, which i’m not going to try to explain further but rather recommend you look up on wikipedia and other places to learn more about.
